I look to men descending escalatorsas I pass ascending though I knowwe’re headed for the same lot – to their shoulders,bridges braced by pylons sunken intopockets, strained with shopping bags or angledto accept a toddler’s fingers. Lookto men downstream on rocks with reboundwomen, stealing slugs off beer cansin the sun. To men in librariesdiscerning what the day might bring,their eyebrows my horizons’ furthestforests. I look left and right of menat lockers at the Y, and catalogtheir daily small complaints: bum knee, a sonwho’s changing majors, leaky roof and allthese goddamn meetings.

I profess to look at mirrors, checkmy phone for dates and times and women’s words,but sneak a glance at men in deep-friedbars before a wall of dancingscreens, in clearance sections wadinginto lowland towns of plaid,men in the waiting room wonderingwhat will be asked. I want to ask themhow they came this way, how they got over,what to stomach, when to dig in heels.Who did they look to when the lineswere drawn then scuffed with windblownsands, when the bottle was dry thensmashed to glassy stars, who told themthat the job was theirs to lose, to justlook busy knowing where to go.

Noah Kucij​

"He Sees Nothing in Me Astonished" by Maureen Alsop

​Noah Kucij lives in South Carolina. Recent work appears in Verse Daily, Slipstream, Storm Cellar, and Old School Record Review.

Maureen Alsop, Ph.D. Is the author of three poetry books, most recently Later, Knives & Trees. Her visual works have appeared at Journal of Compressed Arts, Drunken Boat, Superstition Review, and Otolith. ​